Surf pop music, including both surf ballads and dance music that includes a vocal line.

Surf rock, which overlaps both the other streams, sometimes even to the point of being used as a synonym for surf music generally.

Many notable surf bands have been equally noted for both surf instrumental and surf pop music, so surf music is generally considered as a single genre despite the variety of these styles.

Recordings in all three traditional subgenres are normally attributed to the bands that performed them, rather than to individual artists. A more recent development is the singer songwriter subgenre, which includes artists like Australian Beau Young, Jack Johnson, Donavon Frankenreiter, Matt Costa, and overlaps the others in style.

The addition of tenor or baritone saxophone is a common variation. Additional guitars, organ, electric piano, or hand drums or other percussion are also frequently used.

This basic configuration is identical to that adopted in the early development of rock and roll music, and the two styles developed in parallel, with some bands clearly in both genres. Both styles influenced the development of the electric guitar, electric bass and drum kit, and in the process affecting each other.

Surf music was the first genre to universally adopt the electric bass; the upright or string bass has never been used to any great extent, as the more sustained and trebly sounds favored by surf bands are not easily obtained from it. The promotion of more creative uses of electric bass as part of surf music influenced both rock and jazz music.

Surf music also shared with rock and roll and jazz in the development of drum kit technique. Both surf and rock music (and some jazz styles) adopted a back beat as standard at about the same time, and using similar fills and rhythms. Both surf and rock styles were predominantly 4/4 common time.

Early instrumental surf bands were formed in many geographic areas, most prominently from the Southern California area, such as the Beach Boys ,Surfaris and Dick Dale.While there are several examples of the style taking forms in other regions as well.
Both the Astronauts (Boulder, Colorado) and the Trashmen (Minneapolis, Minnesota) played surf music and their Billboard hits Baja (Astronauts, #94, 1963) and Surfin Bird (#4, 1964) showed that the popularity of the genre was spreading widely.

An early surf instrumental hit, Bulldog (Billboard #24, 1960), was composed and performed by The Fireballs, a band that hailed from Raton, New Mexico. This recording could be considered a blueprint for the surf instrumental genre, with its sustained lead guitar picking, spare percussion and medium-fast tempo.

The Atlantics, from Sydney, Australia, were not exclusively surf musicians, but made significant contributions to the genre, the most famous example with being their hit "Bombora" (1963). Another Australian surf band who were known outside their own country's surf scene was the Joy Boys, whose hit "Murphy the Surfie" (1963) was later covered by the Surfaris.

European bands around this time generally focused more on the style played by the Shadows. A notable example of European surf instrumental is Spanish band Los Relampagos' rendition of "Misirlou". The Dakotas, who were the British backing band for mersey-beat singer Billy J. Kramer gained some attention as surf musicians with "Cruel Sea" (1963), which was later covered by the Ventures and eventually other instrumental surf bands, including the Challengers and the Revelairs.

This is medium to fast dance music which adds a male or female vocal line and often harmonies, and is otherwise very similar to surf instrumental music. Themes of the lyrics come from surf culture, teenage issues, and are often lighthearted or even humorous.

Musically there has always been a great deal of common ground between surf and rock music. The classic lead, rhythm, and bass guitar plus drums combo developed at the same time in both genres, using similar instruments and both contributing to the development of the instruments themselves. Some pieces of surf music have been an integral part of the sound of the rock bands that created them, and so are in both genres (see examples, below).

In that surf rock simply means surf music played by rock bands, with the ever broadening scope of the term rock music since the 1960s, in a sense surf music has become a subgenre of rock music. This is seen for example in the induction of classic surf band The Beach Boys into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Surfaris in to the Hollywood Rock Walk of Fame. A similar process has seen much country and western and even jazz music retrospectively termed rock. So, surf rock is not a new style of music, but rather a new name by which new fans know an old style and even the old music.